The story-teller—­himself a priest and prior—­caught the lofty trick of manner which belonged to the great ladies of the court, and was inherited by them, even in England, down to the time of Queen Elizabeth, who treated her bishops also like domestic servants;—­ “matinet bien main!” To the public, as to us, the justice of the rebuke was nothing to the point; but that a friend should exist on earth or in heaven, who dared to browbeat a bishop, caused the keenest personal delight.  The legends are clearer on this point than on any other.  The people loved Mary because she trampled on conventions; not merely because she could do it, but because she liked to do what shocked every well-regulated authority.  Her pity had no limit.

One of the Chartres miracles expresses the same motive in language almost plainer still.  A good-for-nothing clerk, vicious, proud, vain, rude, and altogether worthless, but devoted to the Virgin, died, and with general approval his body was thrown into a ditch (Bartsch, 1887, p. 369):—­

Mais cele ou sort tote pities
 Tote douceurs tote amisties
 Et qui les siens onques n’oublie
 son PECHEOR n’oblia mie.

“Her sinner!” Mary would not have been a true queen unless she had protected her own.  The whole morality of the Middle Ages stood in the obligation of every master to protect his dependent.  The herdsmen of Count Garin of Beaucaire were the superiors of their damoiseau Aucassins, while they felt sure of the Count.  Mary was the highest of all the feudal ladies, and was the example for all in loyalty to her own, when she had to humiliate her own Bishop of Chartres for the sake of a worthless brute.  “Do you suppose it doesn’t annoy me,” she said, “to see my friend buried in a common ditch?  Take him out at once!  I command! tell the clergy it is my order, and that I will never forgive them unless to-morrow morning without delay, they bury my friend in the best place in the cemetery!":—­

Cuidies vos donc qu’il ne m’enuit
 Quant vos l’aves si adosse
 Que mis l’aves en un fosse? 
     Metes Ten fors je le comant! 
     Di le clergie que je li mant! 
     Ne me puet mi repaier
     Se le matin sans delayer
     A grant heneur n’est mis amis
     Ou plus beau leu de l’aitre mis.

Naturally, her order was instantly obeyed.  In the feudal regime, disobedience to an order was treason—­or even hesitation to obey—­ when the order was serious; very much as in a modern army, disobedience is not regarded as conceivable.  Mary’s wish was absolute law, on earth as in heaven.  For her, other laws were not made.  Intensely human, but always Queen, she upset, at her pleasure, the decisions of every court and the orders of every authority, human or divine; interfered directly in the ordeal; altered the processes of nature; abolished space; annihilated time.  Like other queens, she had many of the failings and prejudices of her humanity.